


Continuous Availability

by thought



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-25
Updated: 2015-11-25
Packaged: 2018-05-03 07:45:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,832
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5282558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thought/pseuds/thought
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do not be ashamed to be tired. You look good when you’re tired. You look like you could go on forever."</p><p>Leonard Cohen</p>
            </blockquote>





	Continuous Availability

Lenses focus. There is a hand, narrow fingers wrapped around an eyeliner pencil, black coal drawn on skin with quick, precise flicks. The eyelashes are long, thick. The skin beneath the eyes is bruised dark with exhaustion but makeup had dealt with that. The person in the image is all sharp angles, defined cheekbones and the sweep of dark hair against the curve of a shoulder, the triangle of pale skin exposed where the collar of a silk shirt lies open. The hem of the skirt hits straight across, just above the knees.

A second hand comes into frame, holding two lipstick tubes.

"What do you think? Red or pink?"

"Irrelevant. If red, then mission proceeds with 76% chance of success. If pink, then mission proceeds with 76% chance of success."

"Pink matches the outfit, I suppose."

"24% preference red over pink observed over 223 day period."

"I didn't ask which I like better."

The red tube drops away out of frame, and the pink, a delicate, almost peach colour, is applied. White teeth flash behind the smile.

"Perfect," Root says, stepping back from the mirror. She shuts out the bathroom light and the image disappears.

*

Root stares across the open warehouse floor to where the laptop sits innocently on a stack of crates. Leaving without it will mean ten days wasted planning, and she's angry enough at the clusterfuck this entire mission has become that she's dismissed the idea of failure outright. They're leaving with the fucking laptop or they're blowing up the building and everyone in it including themselves in revenge. This is a totally reasonable plan.

There are at least two snipers in the vicinity, one outside, one in, and twelve gunmen between them and the laptop. Reese is off to her left and Shaw is a few feet behind her and to the right, and she's got the niggling feeling the gunmen are going to start shooting right through their flimsy cover of stacked sheet metal and plywood. The Machine is keeping a running countdown going until the assholes' backup arrives, just in case Root's stress levels need a little boost.

She calculates angles and reaction times in her head, runs scenarios. If Shaw can keep low and close to the wall she can probably reach the back window before the sniper hits her, and after that the vehicles outside should provide decent cover. Reese will have to cross the open space in the middle of the warehouse, exposed for at least ten seconds, but he's still got a reasonable amount of ammo, and there's no better alternative. He can come out the front and even if the gunmen follow him the door will create enough of a bottleneck that it shouldn't be a problem. And then they can get the fuck out of here with the laptop and Root can go get drunk and reset the desktop backgrounds of all the computers in the Pentagon again. She's thinking elephants.

She's about to start issuing instructions over the coms when there's an unexpected burst of gunfire, a flicker of movement in her peripheral vision, and then Shaw's throwing herself down beside root, elbow landing hard against her ribs, which are apparently bruised. Root sucks in air, notices how dry her mouth is around the same time her arms decide to remind her that her jacket has made a new home stuck to a barbed wire fence and there is no heating in this fucking warehouse.

Shaw's on her right, so she jabs a finger against a bruise on Root's arm until she twists to look at her. "You guys have a plan?" she demands. She's covered in dust and there's blood trickling down her forehead from a scrape at her hairline and Root really wants to run her fingers up across her face and comb the blood back into her hair like jell.

"Yes," she says. And then pauses, stares back across at the laptop and the gunmen who would definitely shoot at anyone trying to take it, feels the concrete under her hands and Shaw's gaze directed at her and has a brief, intense moment of vertigo. "no. Never mind. Give me a minute. I forgot a variable."

*

She doesn't torture a man in Reykjavík.

This is important. She wanted to. This is also important.

In all the ways that anyone cares about she's reformed enough for polite company. She's not killing people for money, and she remembers to take possible casualties into account when planning and carrying out missions. When she thinks of John and Lionel she actively doesn't want them to come to harm, even if their minds still seem impossibly limited and dull. Harold is like her, and Sameen is like Hanna --something good and beautiful and worth saving-- and The Machine is a combination of the two. This is the highest number of people she has cared about at one time in her entire life.

The difference between her "reformation" and most of the rest of the world is simply that it doesn't come naturally. She'll make sure a building is empty before blowing it up, or incapacitate guards and other unwitting hostiles, but she has to consciously think about it. Whatever fundamental instinct that makes a person value all human life was either quashed during her childhood or never there to begin with, and it has yet to put in an appearance.

All of this to say, she's been awake for thirty-six hours and crossed three timezones when she finds herself in a hotel room with a lawyer tied to a chair and forty-five minutes to figure out which old white millionaire she'll be protecting kidnapping that evening. She has had a lot of coffee, and ran a lot of kilometres, and until this moment every step of her rather convoluted plan has gone perfectly. She paces slow circles around the chair, flicking a knife through her fingers. She knows if she sits down it will be near impossible to force herself to get back up, but as long as she keeps moving the energy under her skin continues to thrum pleasantly.

"So, Aron-- can I call you Aron?" she comes to stand a few feet in front of him, knife in one hand held loosely at her side. Behind her on the desk the electric kettle burbles away happily to itself. "I know you have a very important charity dinner to be seen at this evening, and I hate to say it, but your current outfit might not meet the standards. The blood stains will probably come out if you wave your credit card around enough at the dry cleaners, but I don't know about the tar. Either way, we're both on a deadline, and you've got something I want."

"You're wasting time," The Machine tells her, bluntly. As much as Root has been enjoying the last couple days She's been getting progressively more stressed, though She refuses to tell Root why. Root shrugs slightly.

"I've got forty-five minutes."

"Alternative information retrieval solutions available."

"Sure, but they're not nearly as fun. And besides, I'm very good but it'll take me more time than we've got to hack into the Icelandic government."

"Estimated time forty-six minutes fifteen-seconds."

The man in the chair is looking significantly more alarmed. Root pats his shoulder, the edge of the knife blade brushing against his hair. "If it makes you feel better, the voice in my head is very real."

This does not appear to make him feel any better. Root yanks on the end of his tie, pulling it tight against his neck and with a quick twist of her wrist she slices through the grey silk, letting it fall to the floor in pieces. "How much did that cost you, I wonder?"

"20000 krona," The Machine provides, helpfully. Root curls her lip, and makes a point to grind the remains of the tie into the carpet with her shoe.

"So, my question," she says. "You recently handled a very private case for a particularly wealthy CEO who would rather the board of his company not know that the government noticed and took exception to his stunningly sloppy tax evasion. I need to know who the confidential witness was who provided evidence. I've narrowed it down to a few people, all you need to give me is a name."

"That witness remained confidential for exactly this reason," the lawyer sighs, horribly condescending for someone tied to a chair in an anonymous hotel room.

"No, he's confidential because he's scared Mr. Stefánsson will hatch some ridiculous revenge plot, which is exactly what's happened. I'm the one trying to keep him alive."

"And I'm supposed to believe that, why?"

Root's hand tightens on the knife. The kettle clicks off, leaving the room quiet. "Honestly, I really don't care if you believe it. I'm going to get the information, one way or another. And just between me and you? I'm kind of hoping for another."

The Machine says, "Approaching ethical boundary value."

Root shakes her head. "I haven't even touched him."

"Psychological damage + predicted physical outcomes of current course of action."

Root exhales a frustrated breath. The man in the chair stares at the faded wallpaper across the bed, deliberately not looking at her. Her entire body feels, very suddenly, heavy and brittle, and the act of staying upright is almost painful. She pulls a gun out of the night stand.

"Tell me his name, or I'll shoot you in the head," she says, flicking the safety off. The lawyer continues to stare at the wall.

"Abort process," The Machine says. "Estimated time for electronic information retrieval forty-seven minutes."

"You can't possibly value your duty of professional secrecy over your life," Root says, exasperated.

"I won't tell you anything," he says.

Root steps directly into his line of sight, raising the gun a bit so he gets a good look.

"Abort process," The Machine says. "Retasking interface-- electronic information retrieval."

Root leaves the lawyer tied to the chair. She exits through the back door of the hotel and checks in at another hotel across town before she settles in with her laptop to hack the Icelandic government, because apparently she's going to do so in forty-seven minutes. It turns out the witness is the lawyer's brother, which explains his refusal to talk. Root steals a car and heads off to intercept him on his way out of work.

Standing in the elevator of the office building, she says, "I wanted to hurt him."

"Yes," says The Machine.

"I would have." She keeps imagining Finch's stupid fucking 'not angry just disappointed' face and it's making her sick to her stomach.

"No."

Root laughs harshly. "Yes, sweetie, I really would have. It's been a long week."

"No," The Machine says, again. And then, after a few seconds --an eternity, for Her-- "Analogue interface ethical programming is currently running from a remote location. Unless the connection is lost, the origin of the program does not effect the final result."

Root has to catch herself against the railing of the elevator, the rush of relief so sudden and unexpected that it leaves her dizzy. "Oh," she says, faintly. "Thank you."

*

Root breezes into the subway station late on a Wednesday afternoon, boots dripping dirty slush in the first sputtering gasps of early spring warmth. Finch is just unpacking his briefcase, and Shaw's a little further down the platform cleaning what Root really hopes isn't another rocket launcher.

"Hey kids," Root chirps, striding immediately over to Shaw for no other reason than she can. Shaw's head is bent and her hair's braided back out of her way. Before she can stop herself Root's reached out to drag a nail hard across the exposed skin at the back of her neck, watching the white line that forms under her touch.

"You're so fucking weird," Shaw grumbles. "Your salad is over on the desk, and tell Skynet I'm not your fucking delivery girl."

"Did you order lunch for me?" root asks. "That's adorable. Thank you for picking it up, Sameen."

She spends the next twenty minutes bouncing between Shaw and Finch's latest attempt to hide a back door in the DoD where nobody will find it. Finally, Finch says "Miss Groves, as charmingly horrifying as it is that The Machine and Miss Shaw appear happy to bring you lunch, I'm fairly sure if that bag spends another minute so close to that harddrive I'm going to have a heart attack."

"They have medication for that, Harry," Root says. "At your age you're heart is no laughing matter."

Finch glares. Root grins, but now that he's pointed out the bag's vicinity to the computers her heart is starting to feel a little jumpy as well, so she transfers it to an empty chair.

"You could always try eating it," Shaw says. Root waves an absent hand.

"I already ate."

"Twenty-four hours ago," The Machine chimes in in her ear.

Root shrugs. She's feeling happier than she has in weeks, and the idea of risking that delicate balance of circumstances by weighing herself down with food or staying still long enough to eat isn't appealing.

"Whatever," Shaw says, but her gaze keeps flickering back to Root and Root can recognize concern there even if Shaw can't identify the feeling. Every time Root notices Shaw looking at her she has to turn away to hide her doubtlessly ridiculous happy grin. It's a problem, and she winds up backseat programming over Finch's shoulder until he pushes the keyboard over to her, actually throwing his hands up in defeat. She catches on to his thought process easily --they've worked together enough that they understand how the other thinks-- and settles in happily. She hears Finch leaving with Bear, then Shaw going back and forth from the platform to the subway car, probably returning the weapons she'd been cleaning.

Root slips comfortably into a single-minded focus, mostly scrolling as she hunts for errors in Finch's code or solutions he hasn't considered. Shaw comes up on her left at one point, but she leaves just as quickly. She loses three hours to the doD's new security protocols (markedly upgraded as of three days ago because they clearly have no respect for the user experience of anybody looking for information) and it takes The Machine informing her loudly that she needs to be on a flight to Paris in three hours before she looks away from the screen. She glances around for Shaw, absently wiggling a piece of lettuce from between her teeth with her tongue. Root frowns, looks down at the desk where the almost empty plastic container that held her lunch sits.

"You're like a hamster," Shaw calls, coming out from the back room with a little smirk. "Just have to leave vegetables sitting around and you'll eventually get distracted enough that you'll eat them. What's that called? Free feeding?"

Root flips her off, but she can feel the creeping return of the dorky grin. "Brb, France," she says and flees before she starts spilling embarrassing affection all over the place.

*

Root and Shaw revisit their first date experience on what is possibly the hottest day all summer. Ok, second hottest, thank you, but the point stands that ten hours in a safe house with an unconscious man tied up in the next room is significantly less enjoyable in 97 degrees F. Admittedly Finch's standards in safe houses are much higher than the CIA's, and nobody had to be tazed to be convinced to come along (this point has been shifted back and forth from the pro to con category at least eight times) but the charm of the experience is absolutely a product of the novelty.

Shaw has stripped down to a black tank top and denim shorts, and Root, who is meant to be teaching herself the basics of organic chemistry for her next cover identity, keeps getting distracted by a fresh set of bruises on Shaw's upper arm. They're finger bruises, the mark of an asshole in a bar the night before who had thought it a good idea to get physical when Shaw didn't agree that the drink he'd bought for her without her permission was proper payment for sex. Root had watched from a few feet away while Shaw broke his wrist and his nose in one move, finishing up by dumping the remainder of his shitty beer over his head. Root had been focused on the mission, so hadn't paid much mind to the incident, but now those finger marks keep drawing her eyes like magnets.

Shaw is sprawled out on the couch, trying and failing to sleep, and inevitably she notices Root's preoccupation.

"Seriously?"

"No," says root. Angry small town men swim up through her memory, made giant and faceless through the fog of childhood. She remembers muttered words in the church coffee line like 'jealous' and 'a bit of a drinking problem' and 'not that bad, really', and she wants to curl into herself until she disappears.

Shaw's quiet for a minute, then she rolls off the couch and pokes Root with her foot where she's sitting on the floor. "Holy shit, the guilt face is worse than the jealousy face."

"I'm not," Root says, sharply. "That's not what this is. I don't get jealous, it's a ridiculous emotion. And even if I did it certainly wouldn't be over that idiot."

"Ok," says Shaw. "But you keep staring at the bruises."

Root keeps her eyes fixed on her laptop screen as she struggles to articulate what's going on in her head. She wonders if this is what Shaw experiences all the time. "He left those marks on you, and they weren't... Something you wanted. And they're stupid, meaningless, it's not like a gunshot or a scar you got from fighting for your life, or somebody else's. They're just there because he felt like he was entitled to something and you didn't agree to them and it's fucking pathetic, the way our bodies can just betray us like that, the way our skin will take anything it's given."

Shaw flops back onto the couch. "It's too hot to deal with your crazy, I'm sorry I asked."

Root huffs an irritated breath. A bead of sweat runs down her spine and she hates the physical world just that little bit more.

"Hey," Shaw says, a minute later. Root looks up automatically. "If it bothers you so much why don't you cover them up? I've got a lighter and a knife and a sharpie in my backpack, I'm sure you can come up with something."

"I don't see how that will make anything better."

"You said it bugs you because I didn't want it, or didn't give permission or whatever. So this is me giving you permission. God knows we don't have anything better to do, and I'd rather you be the reason my arm hurts than some random asshole."

Root wants to object, but Shaw's watching her like a challenge. She crawls across the room to where Shaw dumped her backpack and starts rifling through the pockets. She finds the lighter, then two sharpies, blue and red, then the knife.

When she picks up the knife, The Machine says "No," not like an order but like a request. She drops it back in the bag. She finds a couple clothespins in a kitchen drawer, and some zip ties on top of the fridge, just in case things progress in that sort of direction. Root grins a bit because she's pretty confident that things are gonna progress in exactly that direction.

When she gets back, Shaw is still on the couch, stretched out on her back, hands palm up at her sides. It's only then that Root understands the earlier look of challenge-- Shaw's offering up a vulnerability to see how Root will handle it. She folds down on her knees beside the sofa, catches Shaw's hand and presses a kiss into the palm.

"Ok," she says softly. "Where should I start?"

"I really don't care," Shaw says dryly. Root pets her hip through the thin material of her top.

"I wasn't talking to you, sweetie."

*

"Take off your shirt," Shaw says.

Root winks before she even has the conscious intent. The scrape across her cheek burns pointedly. "I thought you'd never ask, Sameen."

"We literally fucked two nights ago," Shaw grumbles. "Did you take anything?"

"No," Root says. "I don't exactly carry painkillers around with me."

Shaw glances up at her, bemused. "Maybe consider it."

Root drags her shirt off, hands shaking hard as the bullet graze on her side spikes fire through her muscles. Shaw turns on the tap and uncaps a bottle of disinfectant. She rests a steady hand against the small of Root's back as she washes blood and dust away from the wound.

"This is pretty bad," she says. "Work on dodging."

Root clenches her hand around the edge of the counter and breathes deeply. "I was a little distracted."

Shaw grunts, tears a package of gauze open.

"You look like shit," she says, once she's finished bandaging the wound. "If I let you leave are you gonna pass out in the gutter?"

Root bumps her hip against Shaw. "Aww, Sameen, are you asking me to spend the night?"

"Yeah, Root, I'm asking you to fucking lose consciousness somewhere where you won't get mugged."

Root kind of wishes Shaw's hair was short enough to ruffle. "I'm flattered."

Root has, over the past months, said "I'm busy," and "I've had too much coffee," and "I don't like lying on my left side,", because there's no comfortable way to say "Everyone I now care about went along with it that time Finch committed me to a mental hospital against my will and my traitorous body still won't let me fall deeply asleep around any of you". It's the sort of concern The Machine would usually help her with, but She was as complicit as everyone else in that situation.

Shaw sighs, starts packing away the first aid supplies. "Just don't die. It'd be inconvenient."

Root smiles down at her, something warm and soft expanding in her chest. "I won't."

Shaw leaves the bathroom. Root splashes water on her face, finger combs her hair.

"You have a new mission for me?" she asks.

The Machine is quiet while Root struggles back into her shirt, but by the time she's zipping her jacket She's rattling off details.

Root stares into the mirror as she washes her hands. The person in the mirror has sunken cheeks, exhaustion carving paths under her reddening eyes. The skin across the arch of the left cheekbone is raw and red, but makeup will make it presentable. The person in the mirror looks fundamentally exhausted, verging on collapse.

Root doesn't have the time or patience to deal with the person in the mirror. She turns out the bathroom light. The image disappears.


End file.
